Chart(s) of the Day: $TFM & $WFM – Red Grocers

by Dan January 6, 2014 3:39 pm • Commentary

Today was a bad day to be a stock with a three letter ticker with the second and third consecutive letters being F and M.  Specifically, two of the favorite high-end healthy grocery stores, The Fresh Market (TFM) and Whole Foods (WFM) are both down more than 3% on the day, with WFM approaching down 6% on the year.

Let’s first take a look at WFM, as the stock briefly traded below its 200 day moving average this morning, for the first time since early May.  The one year chart below shows the stock, much like we saw in this morning’s write-up of AAPL (here), failed at the uptrend line and approaching key technical support:

WFM 1yr chart from Bloomberg
WFM 1yr chart from Bloomberg

Similarly to AAPL, if WFM can not establish a new range towards the uptrend, the stock could be vulnerable down to the nice round number of $50 (in AAPL’s case it would be $500).

And then there is much smaller competitor, The Fresh Market ( to put in context just a $2 billion market cap to WFM’s $200 billion).  On the surface this chart is nothing short of a disaster, down a little more than 30% from the 52 week highs back in August, after a couple misses and guide downs.  The two year chart below shows the importance of the $40 level, which it has been straddling for the last month or so:

TFM 2yr chart from Bloomberg
TFM 2yr chart from Bloomberg

What’s very interesting about today’s price action is that I really can’t find any meaningful news for the weakness in either stock.  (WFM was downgraded by a small firm) WFM in particular is having its largest volume day in 2 months, since they guided down in early November.